10 reasons to go to Las Vegas to non-gambling people

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The city of sins, a paradise for gamblers, the place from where you can bring the most incriminating evidence - whatever you call Las Vegas. But those who do not gamble or have made a vow not to go to a casino, in vain cross it off the list of places to visit. Las Vegas is not only “one-armed bandits” and card tables, it is a theater city, where you can make amazing discoveries by looking behind the scenes. ForumDaily found 10 reasons for non-gambling readers to come to Vegas.

Dancing fountainsThe dancing fountains in front of the Bellagio Hotel can rightfully be called the “calling card” of Las Vegas. Coming and looking “for show” is the same as not coming at all. The fountain show needs to be seen at least twice - from the ground, standing right in front of them, and from above, sitting in a restaurant or just standing on the balcony of one of the hotels in the area. These will be two completely different spectacles.

Jets of water rise to a height of 152 meters to the music. They also sway to the beat of the music, that is, they dance, and the sound of the water mixes with the voices of Pavarotti, Bocceli, and Sinatra. Sometimes the fountain may suddenly start working to the tune of a patriotic “God Bless America.” It cost $1175 million to transform 4500 water jets and 40 lamps into a work of art, but they don't charge viewers a cent.

Price: Free options

Address: 3600 Las Vegas Blvd S, Bellagio Hotel Resort, Las Vegas, NV

Openning time: every 15 minutes with 16: 00 hours until midnight

Gondola rideLas Vegas has its own New York, its own Paris - hotels with such names are built as copies of the famous attractions of these cities. To some, copies of the Statue of Liberty or the Eiffel Tower seem comical, but what you see at the Venice Hotel is actually impressive. The inside of the hotel is stylized as Venetian streets, there is also St. Mark's Square, the Campanile, and the Rialto Bridge.

But the main miracle is the real canals and gondolas with gondoliers who float under the bridges and sing “Santa Lucia”. The unique lighting creates the illusion of daylight: no matter what time you find yourself in “Venice”, it will seem that it is a cool summer day and you are in the real Italy. Venice in miniature cost the owners $1,5 billion - and this is not counting the gondolas, which were brought directly from Italy, bought from hereditary gondoliers.

Price: Free options

Address: 3355 S Las Vegas Blvd, Las Vegas, NV

Openning time: around the clock seven days a week

Desert beach

Perhaps in Las Vegas there can be no unfulfilled desires. If you want a beach with sea sand and waves in the middle of the Nevada desert, come to the Mandalay Bay Hotel and get real ocean waves, which are simulated in local pools. The sunbeds here are actually on fine white sand - it was brought here from California. And from all the seas and oceans of our planet we collected the most dangerous sharks.

Shark Reef is one of the largest aquariums in North America and the only one in the United States that houses hammerhead fish. In addition to sharks, rare species of stingrays and fish swim here, which you can practically touch with your hands. The aquarium is located in a glass tunnel, and predatory fish swim directly above the heads of visitors, at arm's length. This is the only aquarium that is located away from water sources.

Price: For adults - $20, for children under 12 years old - $14, for children under 3 years old - free

Address: 3950 S Las Vegas Blvd, Las Vegas, NV

Openning time: Daily from 10.00 20.00 up

Secret garden, dolphins and white tigers

The goal of each hotel is to get tourists into its gambling hall, where there are slot machines and card tables. In most hotels, to find something interesting and unusual, you need to go through the casino. But in Mirage it’s the other way around: first you find yourself in the Secret Garden, then you pass by enclosures in which white tigers and white lions, Asian elephants, Bengal tigers, panthers and snow leopards live. Then you walk among flamingos and hummingbirds, walk along the pool with dolphins - and only then, if you want, go to the casino itself.

Nobody probably knows who lives in the Secret Garden. Some met owls there, others met peacocks, some managed to pet a lemur, and some even said that they enjoyed a cup of coffee all alone. Despite the “Dolphinarium” sign, you don’t have to look for tickets for shows with dolphins. Here dolphins live their lives, delight the eye and don’t do any tricks. Dolphins frolic and play in conditions that are as close to natural as possible, even in their pool - a real coral reef and sand that was raised from the bottom of the ocean. The only thing the dolphins were trained to do was play ball with visitors. And they do this with great pleasure. True, no one is responsible for the dryness of your clothes.

Price: For adults - $20, for children under 12 years old - $15

Address: 3400 S Las Vegas Blvd, Las Vegas, NV

Work time: Monday-Friday from 11.00 to 16.00, Saturday-Sunday from 10.00 to 16.00

Museum of Neon Signs

Where else could such a museum appear, if not in a city that lives precisely at night, in the light of neon advertisements and letters. Since 1929, when the first neon signs appeared in Las Vegas, the museum began to emerge. Or rather, at first it was a cemetery - everything that burned out, went out of order or was out of fashion was taken to the vacant lot. But since neon signs had become a symbol of classic Vegas, a decision was made half a century ago to turn the cemetery into a museum. Among the junk, they even dug up exhibits with a hundred-year history. This is how the museum turned into a real illustration of the history of design.

Today it is the only museum in the world that collects, stores and studies neon signs and neon advertising. Some copies were saved from under the presses at the collection points of scrap metal. And the most famous neon sign is considered to be a horse rider - this is the first sign that appeared in 30 of the last century on Fremont Street near the Hacienda section.

Please note that in order to get to the museum, the tour must be ordered in advance, at least one week in advance.

Price: $15

Address: 770 Las Vegas Blvd N, Las Vegas, NV, telephone for tour recording + 1 702-229-5366

Openning time: Monday-Friday from 9.00 to 17.00, the museum is closed on Saturday-Sunday.

Nuclear Test Museum

Most of us think that only those who want to make money on vice and passion come to Las Vegas. But no. In the Mojave Desert, where the city is located, there is also a big secret of American nuclear weapons.

Isolated and cut off from the world, 1951 turned out to be the ideal place for nuclear testing. In 105 km northwest of Las Vegas, a test site was built. Underground tests here were carried out before the 1992 year, and all that is allowed to show and tell, now collected in the Museum of Nuclear Testing.

At a test site in Nevada, about 800 underground and about 100 atmospheric nuclear shells were blown up. More than 12 of thousands of exhibits related to the US nuclear program have long been the real secret materials. But now, when both protective equipment and Geiger counters (instruments for detecting and changing the power of radiation) and models of bombs are outdated, it’s safe to show them.

In the museum's bunker-like rooms (a design idea to create the feeling of being in a shelter), you can watch videos of nuclear tests. Get ready for the fact that this will not be an ordinary movie about an explosion with an atomic mushroom in the lead role. In fact, the audience is blinded by a strong flash, followed by a roar, and a wave of hot air rushes into the bunker cinema hall. At this time, the benches begin to tremble and it seems as if they are about to come off the floor. Those who are faint of heart and impressionable should probably avoid visiting.

Price: Entry for donation, money goes to charity

Address: 755 E Flamingo Rd, Las Vegas, NV

Openning time: Monday-Saturday from 10.00 to 17.00, Sunday from 12.00 to 17.00

Pinball hall of fame

You are probably familiar with the game “Pinball,” in which you need to throw balls with your “paws” without letting them fall, in its computer version. But for Americans, it is not computer pinball that is considered favorite and traditional, but playing on a pinball machine. This is a table covered with glass, on which, just like on a computer, you need to push a ball around without letting it fall for as long as possible.

At the very beginning it was a miniature billiard table with pins stuck on it, and later progress had a hand in the game - slot machines and even sports-themed varieties of pinball appeared.

The only pinball museum or hall of fame in the world can boast that all of its exhibits (and there are about 1000 of them) are operational and the machines can be played.

The owner of the museum, Tim Arnold, got carried away with the idea when he was an 16-year-old teenager. In 1972, he began collecting automatons across America, restoring them and putting them on display for pinball fans. The money that Tim gets from fans to play, he gives to charity.

Price: Admission to the Hall of Fame is free, playing on old machines is 25 cents, on new ones - 50 cents

Address: 1610 E. Tropicana, Las Vegas, NV

Openning time: Sunday-Thursday - from 11.00 to 13.00, Friday-Saturday - from 11.00 to 12.00

Game cars for big boys

In this large sandbox you can fall back into childhood in a matter of seconds. True, provided that you are already 21 years old. A construction site with a fleet of excavators and bulldozers is like any boy’s dream come to life. You can sit in any car and dig, dig, pour.

The owner of this amusement park, Ed Mumm, once hired excavators to build his house, but after a while the work stopped because Ed was having fun and having fun driving the big machines. When the house was finally finished, Ed came up with the idea: if going back to childhood is interesting for him, then it will be interesting for others too.

There are a lot of people who want to sit behind the levers of construction machines, although this sandbox is an expensive entertainment. However, Ed invested well: about a million dollars was spent on the construction of a giant sandbox and the purchase of bulldozers, excavators and other machines from his boyhood dreams.

Price: $200

Address: 3012 S. Rancho Drive, Las Vegas, NV

Openning time: Daily from 10.00 15.30 up

Overhead movie

They say about Las Vegas that it is a city of one street. The Las Vegas Strip, a 7-kilometer stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard, is home to all the major casinos, hotels and shops.

Vegas has always been a city of one street, only before life was in full swing on a completely different street - Fremont Street. In the 90s, the construction of the Las Vegas Strip with skyscrapers and casinos of a completely different level began, and Fremont began to die. To save the area, a unique “overhead cinema” was built here in 1995. This is a huge dome screen with a length of 460 meters, consisting of 12,5 million displays and producing sound with a power of 555 kW. The screen shows films, excerpts from show programs that are shown in Las Vegas casinos, and performances by stars. This attraction brought tourists back to vintage Vegas.

Price: Free options

Address: Fremont St, Las Vegas, NV

Openning time: Every day, around the clock

Guinness Museum of Records

Many world records that were included in the Guinness Book were recorded in Las Vegas. Perhaps because the number of crazy extreme sports enthusiasts per capita here is off the charts. At the Guinness World Records Museum, the main treasure is video recordings of world records. After all, to get into this book, you need not only to declare yourself and document the achievement, but also to invite representatives of the book to film the record on camera. The filmed video was kept in closed archives for many years, but then they decided to show it in a special cinema hall.

Price: For adults - $6.50, for children under 12 years old - $4.50, for children under 4 years old - free

Address: 3930 S Las Vegas Blvd, Las Vegas, NV

Openning time: Daily from 10.00 12.00 up

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